With its ambient whale-call string bass intro and projected constellations and mandalas, Resonanssi at first resembled nothing in my experience so much as the multimedia physics shows at the Cahners Theater of the Boston Museum of Science in the 1970s. Ann-Sofi Kyrklund's tapping emerged in its initial variation as an additional percussion line for a Brubeck-style jazz duo, evolving into a monologue with the words just out of reach. Left alone on the stage she got bored talking to herself (and we were starting to get bored listening to her) but was saved by Jussi Lindroos's prisoner response knocking and subsequent Houdinic emergence from a box under her feet.

A rock solid tapper with loose, tai chi influenced arm style, Lindroos first did a not-quite matched pas de deux with Kyrklund before trading licks with the musicians with hipster humor. He makes it look easy, as they say, which Kyrklund, like many superb teachers, does not; her eyes rarely left the floor and my knees creaked just from watching her. She did have a few more airborne moments near the end of the show where the dialogic metaphor was made explicit as her taps alternated with the auctioneer-speed Indian vocal percussion of Sheila Chandra. In this section her upper body movements also broke free of the traditional energy-economic chicken-wing flapping to incorporate sinuous southeast Asian styles that would have meshed interestingly with Lindroos's solo karate had the choreography allowed for it instead of making her Spooky the Owl.

Okay, that was a cheap shot from someone who has never seen a tap show before. The show is on at Stoa tomorrow night as well (open seating).
. . . posted by Diana 3/29/2005 11:06:00 AM

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Just for the hell of it, I'm going to translate part of Heikki Patomäki's "Open Letter to the Rector," which shows that the professorial angst detailed each week in the columns of the Chronicle of Higher Education has come to Finland as well. Patomäki, a political science professor, was writing against the new salary system in which civil service pay grades for university employees, with set increments for job title, degrees, age, and length of service, are being replaced by a supposedly meritocratic system of subjective evaluations by immediate supervisors, with possible bonuses to be paid to top performers if there is extra money. This is part of the plan to make Finnish universities like efficient businesses:

I first tried to suggest deferring the implementation of the salary system reform until next fall (when I would no longer be the head of department but only the deputy head) - not understanding the frenzied determination with which the new system was being pushed through. I appealed to the many other ongoing processes and the unjustified hurry and extra work they were causing, but the reason was also that I felt the new system was bad and potentially downright dangerous. In any case my suggestion met with threats of "serious consequences" if I did not get the reforms in place by the deadline.

Then I took the bull by the horns and decided to start implementing the system on a minimal basis and a sped-up timetable. When I had already conducted some of the required salary appraisals, I was told by the Faculty of Social Sciences that the personal appraisal form had not yet been finalized. (Note: the new system consists of an appraisal of the tasks of the job, followed by an appraisal of the worker's performance in the job.) I put the already-completed forms in the shredder and completed only the job appraisal parts in the rest of the discussions.

The events of Wednesday, March 3 forced me to reconsider the situation. When I got to work first thing in the morning I found in my in-box a message from a colleague at another department in the Faculty exhorting people to refuse to fill in the forms for the new salary system. At 11 am there was a Rector's meeting with the heads of department and the main topic was the new system. Jorma Äijö, who was responsible for matters relating to the salary reform, spoke arrogantly at that meeting. His basic assumption seemed to be that the Ministry of Education and the central administration of the university would dictate what should be done and how, and no matter how often and arbitrarily the rules were changed, the job of professors was just to implement the orders on time and in addition to crack down on their colleagues who asked questions, expressed doubts, opposed the system or resisted following orders. Finally, later the same day I had my own appraisal with the Dean and confirmed that the round of interviews I had done with my direct reports would have to be done over again, because the forms for the second (individual performance) part had not been finalized. All of this raised again in my mind the deep doubts I had had about the nature and intent of the new salary system.

Patomäki then gave five main reasons why the system was bad and ought not to be implemented in any Finnish university:

salary negotiations take up a great deal of time in departments that are already too pressed to do any research;

a very small amount of money (2-7% of salary funds) will be spent on bonuses for high achievers with the result of increasing inequality and dissent;

the success of the academic enterprise is built on making the exchange of ideas as free and relaxed as possible, while the new salary system promotes competition and hierarchy;

academic freedom requires that people should be able to choose what they will work on without worrying too much about politics with their department head, and to disagree with each other without fear of reprisal, and the subjectivity of the new system will erode necessary diversity;

the university governance system was reformed in the 1960s to give the teaching staff more voice in affairs and the current developments reverse that progress toward democracy.

He then resigned as head of department.

I had my first review under the new system last week. Identification of high and low achievers in the new meritocratic world does not take place through reviews of portfolios by committees of superior scholars, but in short conversations with busy higher-ups who may never have had time to get to know you at all. I was told straight off that "you're getting 3s (out of 5). Everybody is getting 3s except for some senior people who will get 4s. The Faculty doesn't want to see too many high marks." This was naturally very motivating and I am wondering whether to apply the principles to my own marking to save time.

No matter how many procedures are undertaken to make them look like businesses, Finnish universities differ from the average company in two important ways: first, they have a worldwide monopoly over higher education in Finnish, and no new universities can be started without the government's consent; second, they do not have the ability to adjust supply to demand. We took about 70 major students if I recall correctly, plus some more minor and teacher-line students. We had no control over this number and it was likely set by the Ministry of Education. Now, selective universities in the United States also reject large numbers of qualified applicants, but students there have many more options and everybody fairly soon ends up somewhere satisfactory for their needs, whereas here there is a substantial backlog of people waiting to retake the entrance exams year after year. One of my extremely talented cow-orkers at the translation firm took our entrance exam four or five times before getting in. Part of the difficulty is that the university system pays students rather than students paying the university; all undergraduate students in Finland automatically get a stipend from the government for 60 months; however, this amount is not enough to live on (about 500 € a month) and therefore most students work, often full time [a separate problem, discussed in 1) below]. So by all means, let's support the government's effort to make universities into business enterprises - on a seventeenth-century business model.

[1] While I have no love for the American tuition and financial aid system, the Finnish student funding system badly needs reforming. The absence of tuition and existence of a stipend for all is something people feel strongly about and previous rumors of cuts have brought students out on protest marches, but perhaps it would be possible to redistribute the money. For example, students could get twice the amount for half the time, that is a study and rent stipend of 1000 € a month for three school years of ten months each which would be sufficient for them to get a good grounding in university work and do some growing up; after that, they are usually working as much as they can and studying part-time anyway.

I would also keep the first five years of education tuition-free but introduce a program of class and service fees for those who want to take more time or remain enrolled as continuing education students after their degrees, to take care of the problem of students who are delaying finishing their theses because they will then lose their right to take elective classes and use the libraries and computer centers. The Open University could also be expanded so that those who did not win free study places through the exam could study for pay if they were qualified. More students would earn more degrees, and then, with the fees collected, we could expand our classes and service offerings for all - everyone in society would win. However, I don't see this happening because I suspect people would go on strike against even the most modest course fees.
. . . posted by Diana 3/12/2005 10:15:00 AM

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